Reine peered through the thick canopy, his breath hitching. Below, the two soldiers—Okla and Bokla—moved with a predatory grace that made his skin crawl. They didn't walk; they prowled, their gold-veined alloy armor catching the dim light of the ravine.
"There are two of them. They seem to be strong... possibly Assassin-types," Reine thought, his eyes tracking their every shift in weight. He didn't move a muscle. He was a statue of grit, his mind already running through a dozen failed simulations of this very moment.
Slowly, Reine raised his hand. He extended three fingers, catching Argol's eye. The Kla brothers were pacing below, their heads whipping around as they searched for where the fox had vanished.
Reine lowered one finger. Two. Argol's knuckles turned white as he gripped his own gear, his face set in a terrified but determined mask. He understood the signal.
Reine lowered another finger. One. The wind in the Ravine whistled, masking the sound of their hearts.
Reine lowered the last finger. Zero.
Reine threw himself from the branch, plummeting through the leaves directly above Okla. Mid-air, his hand flew to his waist, unsheathing Aurelian in one fluid, violent motion aimed straight for the tracker's head. Beside him, Argol shadowed the move, dropping toward Bokla.
But the Kla brothers didn't scream. They grinned.
In a blur of gold-veined alloy, the two brothers stepped back in perfect synchronization. As Reine and Argol were still in the air, the brothers lashed out, flinging a volley of daggers that hissed like vipers.
Reine's honed instincts—forged in the fires of past failures—kicked in. His body twisted mid-flight, the daggers grazing his leather armor as he landed in a low crouch.
"ARGOL!" Reine roared, his head snapping around. But to his surprise, Argol had pulled off a desperate, clumsy roll, the blades thudding harmlessly into the dirt behind him.
The two pairs stood ten feet apart, locked in a tense, silent standoff. The forest seemed to hold its breath.
Okla was the first to break the silence. He ran a thumb over his scarred lip, his grin widening. "You two seem strong," he chuckled, the sound like dry leaves. "But not strong enough."
The brothers charged.
Reine weaved through their strikes with a cold, mechanical precision. Compared to the Knight he had faced, these two felt like a warm-up. Compared to that knight, these two are nothing, Reine thought, and a quick glance at Argol showed his partner felt the same confidence.
Reine saw his opening. He lunged for Okla's neck, intending to end it—but then, the world turned gray.
A sudden, violent drain hit him. It felt like his veins were being filled with lead. Aurelian was glowing a dull, hungry red, and it was drinking his mana faster than he could produce it. His arm felt like it weighed a ton; his knees buckled. The "Worthy" test had begun at the worst possible moment.
Reine stumbled back, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
"YOU WERE JUST LUCKY, YOU LITTLE RAT!" Okla screamed, seeing the weakness. He didn't know about the sword; he just saw a boy failing.
Okla's mana erupted, splitting his form into a dozen flickering illusions. A circle of monsters with sticking tongues and freaky, wide-eyed faces surrounded Reine. The wind began to twist violently, a localized gale whipped up by the spell.
Luck? Reine thought, his eyes half-lidded as the mana-drain threatened to knock him unconscious. You call this luck? Do you know how many times I've died to get this far? The pain... the suffering...
Reine closed his eyes. He didn't need vision. He had the weight of a thousand deaths to guide him. He listened to the air. He felt the displacement of the wind.
His eyes snapped open, locking onto the real Okla.
"HO—"
Reine didn't use the sword. He let it hang at his side, a useless parasite. Instead, he stepped into the storm and threw a devastating right hook. Before Okla could even register the pain, Reine followed through with a mana-starved, bone-shattering left hook.
The impact was absolute. Okla was launched off his feet, his body skipping off the ground like a stone before vanishing into the dark treeline with a sickening thud.
The illusions shattered. Silence returned to the woods—but only for a second.
The atmosphere in the Ravine didn't just change; it curdled.
Five hundred yards away, the Commander halted his march. He didn't see the fight, but he felt it—a jagged, putrid spike of bloodlust that pierced the forest's canopy. He shifted his grip on his mountain-sized saber, his eyes narrowing toward the thicket. He could feel the frantic pulse of the Kla brothers fading, replaced by a cold, hollow silence.
Back in the woods, the air was thick enough to choke on. Aurelian hung at Reine's hip, a dead weight. He knew the blade was a parasite; drawing it now would only accelerate the internal drain he was already battling. He abandoned the steel and balled his fists, his knuckles white and trembling.
"WHERE'S MY BROTHER?"
Bokla didn't just attack; he exploded. Driven by a grief so sharp it bypassed the limits of his rank, his speed reached a frantic peak. Argol intercepted the first strike, the sparks from their blades lighting up the smoke like strobe lights.
Reine stepped into the pocket. He launched a right hook, but he wasn't just throwing a punch; he was timing a collision. He let Bokla's own forward momentum do the work, meeting the man's jaw with the force of a head-on crash.
CRACK.
Bokla's radius snapped under the pressure. He skidded back, his eyes landing on Okla's mangled corpse near the roots. That was the trigger. Bokla's mana flow turned toxic. He bit through his own lip, blood coating his teeth as he entered a state of pure, adrenaline-heavy overdrive. He was no longer fighting to survive; he was trading his life for a single opening.
"ARGOL, BACK OFF! THIS IS AN ORDER!"
The two blurred into motion.
Exchange One: Bokla lunged, his daggers humming with neurotoxin. Reine forced 50% of his mana flow into his lower half. He didn't just dodge; he danced on the edge of the blade's reach. The wind from the daggers whistled past his throat, cutting a thin red line that didn't even have time to bleed before the next strike came.
Exchange Two: Bokla swung low, trying to hamstring Reine. Reine leaped, his shins grazing the steel. While in mid-air, Reine realized the danger. He's not aiming for vitals anymore. He's aiming to slow me down so he can catch me in a grapple. Reine kicked off a tree trunk, his mana-boosted legs nearly snapping the wood as he propelled himself back into the center of the clearing.
Exchange Three: They met in the center. A flurry of daggers against bare fists. Reine parried the flats of the blades with his palms, his skin sizzling where the toxic mana touched him. Every time Bokla swung, Reine felt the temptation to dump mana into his arms to end it, but he held back. Wait for the gap. If I surge now, my body will purge the energy. I have to be a ghost until the moment I become a mountain.
Exchange Four: Bokla began to scream, a sound of raw, vocal cord-tearing agony. His daggers became a blur of green light. Reine's vision began to tunnel. His lungs felt like they were filled with hot ash. He lunged for a decisive blow to Bokla's head, but the twin, fueled by a suicidal instinct, twisted his spine at a sickening angle mid-air. He dodged, and his dagger carved a deep furrow into Reine's shoulder.
Reine stumbled, his boots skidding in the mud. He's adapted, Reine realized, clutching his shoulder. He's waiting for the moment I overextend.
Bokla didn't give him a second to breathe. He lunged for a final, desperate stab, putting his entire weight behind the twin daggers.
Reine didn't move. He lowered his center of gravity. He waited until the heat of Bokla's skin was a hair's breadth away, the daggers literally touching the fabric of his shirt.
In that final micro-second of contact, Reine slammed his mana into his knuckles. Because the infusion happened only at the exact moment of impact, it was over before his body's "rejection response" could even register the surge. There was no leak. No wasted mist.
CRACK-BOOM.
The shockwave traveled straight through Bokla's ribs, the concentrated internal pressure hitting like a physical hammer. The impact bypassed the outer muscles and ruptured Bokla's heart instantly.
Reine stood over the fallen twin, breathing hard but steady. Unlike the strike on Okla, his mana hadn't bottomed out. He had bypassed the downside of his rank. He had mastered the Impact Timing.
"I did it," Reine whispered.
Argol let out a sob of pure relief. "Reine! You actually—you killed them both!" He rushed forward, a wide, tearful smile breaking across his face.
But Reine's "Grit" didn't reset. It spiked. The temperature in the forest plummeted.
Why is the shadow so large?
SWOOSH.
It wasn't a sword swing. It was the displacement of reality itself.
A massive, gold-veined slab of steel cut through the air. Reine's eyes tracked it, but even with his preserved mana, his muscles were too fatigued to intervene.
Time shattered. Argol's celebratory shout turned into a wet, hollow thud. The massive saber had erupted through Argol's chest, the serrated teeth glistening with fresh, steaming blood.
The Giant Commander stood behind him, looking down at Reine with the bored expression of a man crushing an ant. Argol's knees hit the dirt, his eyes meeting Reine's one last time as the light began to fade.